The Price of a
Child: Adult Literacy Curriculum Guide
Annotated Booklist for Younger
Readers
| Armstrong, Jennifer | Steal Away | Grades 5-8 | In 1855 two thirteen-year-old girls, one white and one black, run away from a southern farm and make the difficult journey north to freedom, living to recount their story forty-one years later to two similar young girls. |
| Ayres, Katherine | North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad |
Grades 5-8 | Presents the journal of a sixteen-year-old girl whose family operates the Underground Railroad |
| Beatty, Patricia | Who Comes with Cannons? | Grades 5-8 | In 1861 twelve-year-old Truth, a Quaker girl from Indiana, is staying with relatives who run a North Carolina station of the Underground Railroad, when her world is changed by the beginning of the Civil War. |
| De Angeli, Marguerite | Thee, Hannah! | Grades 3-5 | Hannah, a young Quaker girl in Philadelphia, comes to understand the true meaning of being a Quaker through her encounter with a runaway slave. |
| Greenwood, Barbara | The Last Safe House: A Story of the Underground Railroad | Grades 3-7 | In 1856, Eliza Jackson escapes
from slavery with the help of the
Underground Railroad and the Reid family. Although the families are fictional, the background is fact, based on information from many reliable sources. Included are maps (including one with Philadelphia marked), drawings, and factual passages that give background details of the time. |
| Hamilton, Virginia | The House of Dies Drear | Grades 5-8 | An African
American family of five moves into an enormous house once used as a hiding place for runaway slaves. Mysterious sounds and events and discoveries of secret passageways make the family believe they are in grave danger. |
| Hamilton, Virginia | The Mystery of Dies Drear | Grades 5-8 | An African American family living
in the house of long-dead abolitionist Dies Drear must decide what to do with his stupendous treasure, hidden for one hundred years in a cavern near their home. |
| Hopkinson, Deborah | Under the Quilt of Night | Grades 3-5 | A young girl flees from the farm
where she has been worked as a slave and uses the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in the north. |
| McKissack, Patricia | Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, A Slave Girl | Grades 4-7 | In 1859, 12-year-old Clotee, a
house slave who must conceal that
she can read and write, records in her diary her experiences, and her struggle to decide whether or not to try to escape. |
| Monjo, F. N. | The Drinking Gourd: A Story of the Underground Railroad | Grades 1-3 | When he is sent home alone for
misbehaving in church, Tommy
discovers that his house is a station
on the underground railroad. |
| Pearsall, Shelley | Trouble Don't Last | Grades 4-8 | Samuel, an 11-year-old slave, and Harrison, the elderly slave who helped raise him, attempt to escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad. |
| Porter, Connie Rose | Addy (series) | Grades 2-4 | "These compelling and gripping narratives focus on Addy, a young girl enslaved in North Carolina who escapes to freedom with her mother, and her struggles as a free person trying to learn to read." (Horn Book Guide) Includes Addy learns a lesson, Addy saves the day, Addy's surprise, Changes for Addy, Happy birthday, Addy, and Meet Addy. |
| Rappaport, Doreen | Freedom River | Grades 3-5 | This succinct historical account describes an incident in the life of John Parker, an ex-slave who became a successful businessman in Ripley, Ohio, and who repeatedly risked his life to help other slaves escape to freedom. Repetition of words like "run, run" and "wait, wait" give the text a rhythmic and suspenseful tone. |
| Ringgold, Faith | Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad In the Sky | Grades 1-3 | With Harriet Tubman as her guide,
and in order to be reunited with her
brother, Cassie retraces the steps the escaping slaves took on the Underground Railroad. |
| Rosen, Michael J. | A School for Pompey Walker | Grades 4-6 | At the dedication of a school
named after him, an old former slave tells the story of his life and how, with the help of a white friend, he managed to save money to build a school for black children in Ohio by being repeatedly sold into slavery and escaping. |
| Schotter, Roni | F is for Freedom | Grades 3-6 | When ten-year-old Manda interrupts a midnight delivery, she discovers her parents' involvement in the Underground Railroad and makes her own contribution to a fugitive slave's freedom. |
| Schroeder, Alan | Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman | Grades 1-4 | Young Harriet Tubman, whose
childhood name was Minty, dreams of escaping slavery on the Brodas plantation in the late 1820s. A fictionalized account. |
| Vaughan, Marcia | The Secret to Freedom | Grades 1-4 | Great Aunt Lucy tells a story of her
days as a slave, when she and her brother, Albert, learned the quilt code to help direct other slaves and, eventually, Albert himself, to freedom in the north. |
| Velde, Vivian Vande | There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around | Grades 5-8 | Eleven-year-old Ted becomes
concerned and intrigued when his
five-year-old sister Vicki begins receiving visits from two female ghosts. |
| Winter, Jeanette | Follow the Drinking Gourd | Grades 1-2 | By following the directions in a
song, "The Drinking Gourd," taught them by an old sailor named Peg Leg Joe, runaway slaves journey north along the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada. |
| Woodruff, Elvira | Dear Austin: Letters from the Underground Railroad | Grades 5-8 | In 1853, in letters to his older
brother, eleven-year-old Levi
describes his adventures in the
Pennsylvania countryside with his African American friend Jupiter and his experiences with the Underground Railroad. |
| Wyeth, Sharon Dennis | Flying Free | Grades 3-6 | In 1858, nine-year-old Corey Birdsong and his family, fugitive slaves from Kentucky, build a new life in Amherstburg, Canada, while still hoping to help those they left behind. Book 2 of Corey's Underground Railroad Diary. |
| Wyeth, Sharon Dennis | Freedom's Wings | Grades 3-6 | A 9-year-old slave keeps a diary of his journey to freedom along the Underground Railroad in 1857. Book 1 of Corey's Underground Railroad Diary. |
| Wyeth, Sharon Dennis | Message in the Sky | Grades 3-6 | Ten-year-old Corey Birdsong, a former slave, becomes a conductor on the Underground Railroad by helping to bring a mother and daughter, runaway slaves, to his family's Amherstburg, Ontario, farm in 1859. Book 3 of Corey's Underground Railroad Diary. [NOT YET PUBLISHED] |
|